What's So Scary About Egypt's Islamists?

By Aryn Baker and Abigail Hauslohner / Kafr Shibin Monday, Nov. 29, 2010
    • Lynsey Addario / VII Network for TIME

    Egyptians will go to the polls on Nov. 28 to vote for positions in Parliament. In the last election, members of the Islamist political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, running as independents, won one-fifth of the seats.

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    Who Tolerates Whom
    The same ambivalence about the Brotherhood's aims can be seen in the U.S. Egyptian intellectuals credit the Bush Administration with pushing for the democratic reforms that allowed multiparty elections. But U.S. support for regional democracy waned after the Brotherhood made significant gains and Hamas won the Palestinian elections of 2006. To the dismay of many Egyptians, that wariness seems to have continued. Instead of aggressively pushing for democratic freedoms, President Obama's State Department has sought to strengthen ties with the Mubarak regime, with an eye toward an Egyptian role in peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. But Egypt's opposition says U.S. tacit support for Mubarak does far more damage to the moderate, secular parties that Washington would most like to see in power. "We are not asking you to impose democracy," says newspaper publisher Hisham Kassem. "We are asking you to stop imposing dictatorship."

    Even among those who criticize the U.S. and the Mubarak administration, however, there are doubts about the Brotherhood. Some fear that if it rose to power, it would curtail the rights of liberals, women and minorities. "If fanatics were to run Egypt, there would be no room for Copts [Egyptian Christians] or people like myself," says novelist Alaa al-Aswany. Brotherhood members insist that such fears are baseless, pointing out that Christians receive the same care as Muslims in Brotherhood-operated clinics. When al-Qaeda threatened Egyptian Christians in early November, the Brotherhood condemned the threat.

    The group has long been a vociferous critic of Israel — which in turn regards the Brotherhood as a source of inspiration for and longtime sponsor of Hamas. The Brotherhood's prescription for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is total abandonment of peace talks, coupled with international support for Palestinian armed resistance. Not surprisingly, Israel views the Brothers warily. "It's not like the Muslim Brotherhood has adopted a more lenient or moderate line," says one Israeli official, when asked about the potential impact of a Brotherhood-led Egyptian government.

    That said, the Brotherhood routinely dismisses fears of its ambitions beyond the country of its birth as overblown. Spokesman Mohammed Morsy insists that the Islamists' main goals are purely domestic: "We want to have a Muslim state in Egypt — not in Ireland." At the moment, both possibilities seem equally remote.
    — with reporting by Karl Vick / Jerusalem

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